


A Knot That Ties Four Ways

by grav_ity



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Friendship, Friendship is Magic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2797565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grav_ity/pseuds/grav_ity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Sandry's friends prepare for their journeys, Sandry prepares to lose them, if it comes to that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Knot That Ties Four Ways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mistrali](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistrali/gifts).



The thread was behaving badly, and Sandry did not have the will to make it mind her. She was embroidering, or trying to; a set of cuffs for one of the nicer tunics that Daja was taking with her, but the coloured silks unspun under her fingers, and sent fraying lines across woven cloth. She had done better work when she first learned to thread a needle, and now she was a medallioned mage. It was embarrassing.

With a sigh, she looked out over Summersea. The weather was fine, lifting the pall that otherwise hovered over the harbour, and the fishing boats were out. The Pebbled Sea was clear of danger, and the sky was clear of clouds. Sandry was glad of both: she would be protected by Summersea’s walls and her uncle’s fine fleet, but her friends soon wouldn’t be.

They were headed off, each in a different direction with their teachers, and Sandry would stay behind. She knew she must: Lark’s traveling days were behind her and even if Lark were willing, Sandry’s parents had been the sort of nobles who traveled at their own whims, and Sandry did not wish to follow their example. Her duty was with Vedris, especially now as he began his long recovery. If she did not mind him, he would undoubtedly work himself into another attack, and she would not have that on her conscience.

She had smiled when Briar pointed to far-flung cities on the maps unrolled on the table at Discipline; she had weathered Tris’s storm of doubts about leaving the only place she’d ever loved; she had sat with Daja _trangshi_ no longer, but still sitting astride two worlds; and always she had said the same thing: I’ll be fine. You go. Go and learn.

She did not say what she felt. _Don’t go_ and _Don’t leave me alone_ and, the most pathetic, _Please come back_. Summersea was beautiful, but none of the others were from Emelan. Sandry wasn’t sure what she would do if her friends found other homes. She had fooled them all. She had even fooled Lark. But she hadn’t fooled the blasted thread.

“Cat dirt,” said Sandry, putting the whole piece into her work basket without bothering to fold it first. She would finish it later, and remove the wrinkles she had just caused, but right now she was clearly not in the mood.

“Such language _saati_ ,” came Daja’s voice form the doorway. “Imagine if the other ladies heard.”

“They can hear whatever they want,” Sandry replied in Trader Talk. “I don’t much care what they think of me.”

“You never have.” Daja sat down in the other chair. “Remember when you made that girl drink a plate of milk because she was mean to me?”

Sandry giggled, and set to coiling the embroidery silks she had shoved into her work basket. They still strained away from the neat loops she wanted them in, ends tying themselves in knots even as she pulled them in the other direction. Daja watched her thoughtfully.

“The thread is in a mood today,” Sandry explained. “Even meditating won’t smooth them out.”

Daja put one brown finger on the worst of the snarls. The red thread woven with green and blue twitched.

“You thread knows sailing knots,” the Trader girl said.

“I’m so happy for it,” said Sandry. She hoped she sounded amused rather than bitterly sarcastic. Even her embroidery threads were more worldly than she was.

“It’s decorative, for sure, but still useful,” Daja told her. “We called in a cross knot aboard ship.”

Sandry’s heart skipped a beat. For so long, Daja’s voice had broken when she spoke of her family or of ships. Now she could say both in the same breath.

“It’s a bit like weaving, if you tie it proper,” Daja went on. “Maybe that’s why your thread likes it.”

“I see it.” Sandry squinted at the mess of threads in her lap. Daja was right: the knot was mostly weaving, and weaving was something Sandry understood even better than embroidery.

“You’d see clearer with a rope,” said Daja with a wink. “But that’s not really your style.”

“No,” said Sandry. She smiled for real this time, and set to taking apart the tangle. The threads obeyed her this time.

Daja held each coil as Sandry finished tidying it, and waiting patiently and without comment while her friend tidied her work basket. By the time it was set to rights, the sun was low and Briar came in to tell them that their supper was about to be set out, and if Sandry wanted to avoid having the servants come and look for her, she had better make herself available.

Summersea Palace wasn’t home yet, and with her friends gone Sandry wasn’t sure it could be. It was so different from Discipline and the steady rhythms of Winding Circle Temple. And though she cared for her uncle a great deal, he was not her friend, and her friends were leaving. But Sandry was a stubborn girl, noble or otherwise, and she was determined to smooth out the threads of living here, and make sure that it was enough until her circle came home again.

+++

_a few weeks later_

Vedris coughed for several minutes, and Sandry let him do it. He was tolerant of her managing him thus far, and she was reluctant to push him without good reason. The healers assured her that he was improving, and that this cold was of no danger to his recovery. It was merely the result of living in a drafty stone castle, so close to the Pebbled Sea.

If nothing else, the castle was a bit less drafty now. Slowly, Vedris’s empty keep was filling up with furniture, hangings, and rungs, and each new addition made the place seem more like a ducal seat and less like an empty watchtower. Nothing was excessively ornate, of course, because thrift and common sense were traits shared by the Duke and his niece both, but slowly and inevitably, Summersea Palace was turning into the sort of place where people wanted to live, or at least to come to court.

When the coughing fit had passed, Sandry handed her uncle a handkerchief. She knew from experience that even though his valet put one in his pocket every morning, he invariably misplaced it before their after dinner meeting. Sandry didn’t mind. Vedris was busy and chafed that he could not be busier, and the footmen nearly always recovered the handkerchiefs before they ended up in someone’s rag bag.

“My dear,” Vedris had said when she had told him as much. “No one could possibly mistake your work for something that belonged in a rag bag.

Sandry had smiled. It was small work, especially when compared to what her friends were undoubtedly doing, but it was work that needed done, and she was good at it.

Tonight, Vedris studied the embroidery as he always did when he noticed a new pattern of hers. He smiled as he looked at it, and Sandry couldn’t understand why.

“It’s a sailing knot,” she told him, though surely her pirate-chasing uncle knew as much. “Daja told me. She called it a cross knot.”

“That it is,” said Vedris. “That’s what Traders call it. Your friend Briar would call it a diamond knot, and in Capchen, where Tris might see it, it’s called a square knot.”

“I know,” Sandry said. “I stitched it on clothes for all of them before they left. The threads liked it.”

Vedris, used to such strange declarations from his favourite relative, smiled again.

“We call it something else in Emelan,” he told her. He folded the cloth carefully and handed it back to her. He hadn’t used it, and he had a feeling she would want to keep it close.

“Oh?” said Sandry.

“Indeed,” said Vendris. “Sentimental as it may be, in Emelan that knot is called a friendship knot.”

Sandy said nothing as she took the handkerchief back. Instead of pocketing it, she ran her fingers over the tidy, even stitches. Vedris would have sworn before a magistrate that he saw the threads jump at her touch.

Carefully, carefully, Sandry re-folded the fabric, and tucked it into the pocket where a simply-spun thread with four lumps lay coiled and waiting for its bearers to return.


End file.
